Dunlop Dubai 24 Hours - Thursday Morning

It’s hot and sunny again here at the Dubai Autodrome as the first official session of the seventh edition of the Dunlop Dubai 24 Hours get underway. Two free practice sessions, as well as qualifying and night practice will no doubt make for a very busy day. The DSC crew have been fed, watered and very well rested and are raring to go – a distinct lack of sleep led to rather too many typos in yesterday’s reports (which we’ll tidy up as soon as we get chance).

We get underway with a 45-minute FP session. Unfortunately, our plans to bring you a live report appear to have been scuppered by an erratic internet service here at the circuit (firewall related, apparently). We'll have the report up as soon as possible after the end, but in the meantime, please follow us on Twitter - @dsceditor. 

We’re still awaiting an updated entry list, but we presume that we will have 73 or 74 cars running today; the vast majority of whom were out on track within the first five minutes.

Peter Kox set the early pace – 2:04.607, but Rob Barff went a tenth faster with a dozen minutes gone, before pitting shortly afterwards to hand over to Leon Price.

With 15 minutes gone, the class leaders that we could see (the timing screens not going down beyond 61 cars at this point) were:

A6 – #12 (AUH Ferrari 458) 2:04.562
997 – #40 (Besaplast Porsche 997) 2:10.644
SP2 – # 101 (GT3 Racing Viper) 2:10.932
SP3 – #118 (Nova Race Ginetta G50) 2:12.250
A5 – #54 (JR BMW E46) 2:18.677
A2 – #80 (Besaplast Mini) 2:29.838

It wasn’t long before the #9 Gulf Racing Lamborghini (Mike Wainwright setting the time and “getting a bit of a bollocking from the team” in the progress, according to Stuart Hall) and the #5 Saudi Falcons BMW Z4 beat the Ferrari’s time. As the session progressed, however, more and more cars started to pile up (on the timing screen) behind the LP600, suggesting 2:04 was THE TIME THAT MUST NOT BE BEATEN for the A6 class. We know from Wednesday testing that a 2:01 is easily within reach. We’ll try to find out the ‘threshold’ laptimes per class. We do know from Joe Osborne (Optimum Motorsport G50) that it’s 2:12 for SP3.

Just after the 30-minute point, the session was red-flagged after an apparent off for the #41 Carworld Porsche, but no significant issue was noted with any cars. Perhaps an oil clear up was required?

The clock continued to tick down (no chance of over-running on such a tight schedule) until only five minutes remained before the green light was switched on again. For those cars that got out quickly, possibly two more timed laps would be possible; for those as the back of the queue in the pitlane, probably only one.

Those final few moments turned out to be more significant than expected, as several A6 cars dropped into the 2:03 bracket; Fabien Giroix leading the way in the #8 Gulf LP600 with a 2:03.264, just ahead of Claudia Hürtgen in the #1 Schubert Z4.

The 90-minute FP2 was due to follow after an hour's break.